<b>Effective Implementation of Counselling Curriculum and National Policy on Education in Cross River State Public Secondary Schools: Implications for Counselling</b>

Abstract

This study looked at the effective implementation of counselling curriculum and national policy on education in Cross River State public secondary schools. It employed the descriptive survey method. It made use of three hypotheses, 230 secondary schools as its population, 1,900 students (854 boys and 1,046 girls) as sample, randomly selected from the 18 local government areas of the state and a twenty-item questionnaire called Effective Implementation of Counselling Curriculum (EICC) as instrument. Simple count, percentage- and t-test statistics were used to analyse the data. The study revealed that there is effective implementation of the counselling curriculum in some public secondary schools in urban areas, lopsided posting of specialised personnel in some urban schools. Some public secondary schools in some local government areas do not have counsellors at all to handle the teeming population of 88,621 students in the state's public secondary schools. Moreover, it revealed that there is a dire need for counselling equipment as well as more interpersonal relationship skills to ginger the realisation of counselling curriculum goals. Counselling implications were indicated to foster adequate implementation of the secondary school counselling curriculum all over the state.